SaaStr

A social community of 500,000+ SaaS founders and executives and over 3,000,000 views a month dedicated to sharing the best learnings, insights and practices around building and scaling SaaS businesses.  From nothing, to Initial Traction, to Initial Scale, and beyond.

Paying back and sharing key learnings (hard knock and otherwise) from going from $1m to $100m+ in SaaS.

Continuing to work on ways to do this bigger and more effectively than ever.

Puts on www.SaaStrAnnual.com and SaaStrEuropa.com for 15,000+ SaaS Founders.  PLEASE COME!! :)

#1 enterprise & SaaS blog / content / writer on Quora.

Trusted Advisor

Out of a $100,000,000+ venture fund, we lead $250k-$5m initial investments in great SaaS companies with founders that are Better Than Us.  Generally, with at Least 10 Unaffiliated Customers.

We've done some good ones, including leading the very first or very early VC investments in Algolia, Automile, Logikcull, Mixmax, Pipedrive, PlatoHQ, SalesLoft, Talkdesk, MaestroQA, HelloOffice, Gorgias.io, Mapistry, RevenueCat, Owner, Treasury Prime and others.  I also serve as an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, Front, Intercom, Greenhouse, Retention Science, Sqreen.io / Datadog, among other emerging leaders.

Investor & Founder Champion

Adobe Systems

Adobe Sign / EchoSign from Adobe is the leading 100% web-based e-signature and contract automation service with 1.1m customers and 16m users and used by 9/10 of the top leaders on the web, Facebook, Google, Pandora, Workday, Groupon, Twitter, LivingSocial, Yelp, Oracle, SAP, Coca-Cola, Dell, Citrix, VMWare, EMC, Taleo, Successfactors, Mastercard, you name it.

In March 2013, Adobe announced EchoSign and the Web Services business had hit $64,000,000 in ARR at Q1'13 and $140,000,000+ ARR by FYE'13, and $400,000,000 ARR by Q1'16.

                                                                 -----------

More than 95% of all documents that are digitally signed use the Adobe family of products:  Acrobat, Reader, LiveCycle, and since July 2011, #1 ranked EchoSign.  

And you can start using EchoSign for free from any browser.  http://www.echosign.com   #thepowerofadobe

Vice President, Web Business Services

Adobe Sign / EchoSign is the next great on-demand sales tool.  It is simply the fastest and easiest way to get contracts signed, tracked, and filed.  E-signature or fax signature.  Our 5,000,000 users and 50,000+ customers (including leaders such as Google, Facebook, Pandora, Groupon, American Express, Comcast, Aetna, Twitter, LivingSocial, BT, GE, Qualcomm, CIGNA, Dow Jones, P&G, American Express, Facebook, Dell, TimeWarner, Delta Airlines, Symantec, VMware, AOL, Citrix, Nationwide, UnitedHealthcare and many more) close deals on average in just 42 minutes using EchoSign.  Send, Sign, Done.  We're profitable, we're doing cool things -- and WE ARE HIRING!

Adobe Sign / EchoSign was acquired by Adobe in July 2011 and was backed by Emergence Capital, me, friends, and other investors.

Co-founder, ceo

NanoGram Devices Corp

At NanoGram Devices we pioneered using nanotechnology to dramatically enhance the performance of power sources for implantable medical devices.  NDC technology enables implantable defibrillators and pacemakers to last years longer -- saving lives.  NDC was acquired by the market leader for speciality power sources, Greatbatch Inc. (NYSE: GB) for ~$50,000,000.

NanoSVO was qualified for implantable use in 2007 and has since gone on to extend/save thousands of lives.

Served as VP, Corp Dev @ affiliate NeoPhotonics Corp

Co-Founder, President

NeoPhotonics

I was brought in by the CEO and the Board to investigate and commercialize new uses for the Company's technology at revenue zero.  Ultimately, I helped the CEO focus the core business on telecommunications and raise $30m in venture capital, and then licensed its nascent technology for implantable power sources, using that to start and co-found NanoGram Devices (see above).

NeoPhotonics has since gone on to a successful IPO on the NYSE and a multi-hundred million dollar revenue business.

Vice President, Strategic Development

BabyCenter

Since its founding, BabyCenter has been the leading destination on the Internet for new and expectant parents.  According to Alexa it is the 300th highest trafficked U.S. site on the 'net, dwarfing all competitors.  

Consumer Health Interactive; Johnson & Johnson; eToys

Sr. Director, Corporate Development

Helping, founding, funding, and growing B2B start-ups.  Making it a positive-sum game for everyone involved.

"Do or do not. There is no try."

Specialties: helping people grow and become their best.  doing not the impossible, but the unlikely.  never giving up.

Join us IRL at SaastrAnnual.com

A lot of founders understand sales is hard, but don’t quite understand why it’s so hard as a career.

Here’s why sales is tough:

1/ You can’t hide — at least not for long

At some point, you have to put real points on the board. Everyone will know. But in many other roles, you can sort of skate by if you aren’t too senior.

2/ You get a lot of No’s. A lot of them

Most of us can’t take it.  We get discouraged, we over-discount, we lose our confidence.

3/ Limited career path if don’t move into management

You’ll get a lot better in 2, 3, 5, 8 years. But ultimately, just becoming a more senior individual sales rep has a limit.

4/ Not everyone sees your value

It’s easy to see in many SaaS companies, but overall in the world, many people don’t really value the large contributions sales professionals make.

5/ If you do really well, folks take you a bit for granted

They assume sales is easy, it’s order taking.  Sales is never easy.  The best just sometimes make it look that way.

6/  You can be just a number to the company

If you are part of a larger sales team, you may just be a number on a leaderboard in some sense.

7/ At the VP level, your job is always at risk

This is a real stressor. As a VP of Sales, every quarter you have to hit the number. You can miss a quarter or even two, but after that, your job is at high risk. High risk.

Sales is a craft, an art. It really is. But not everyone appreciates it.

Learn to, and your team will appreciate it.  And be more loyal.  And see less churn.

Jason M. Lemkin

LIVE Workshop Wednesday: What you need to change at $10M to scale to $10…

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SaaStrEuropa.com 2023

Should you join that Seemingly Successful SaaS start-up? The one that just raised a nice seed round, that has $20k, $50k, $100k in MRR, and a cool product?

Maybe.

The key is understanding if it’s merely a pre-success you are meeting with … or one that potentially can be very successful. And it turns out, at least in my experience, the characteristics of Successful and Very Successful SaaS companies are actually quite different.

But especially in the early days, it can be hard to tell, especially from the outside.

To be a Successful SaaS Company — which is very hard today, because there are 10,000+ SaaS start-ups everywhere in every category, and buying is under more scrutiny than in many years — you need:

1/ A very, very committed CEO and co-founders

It’s too hard to make customers happy if you aren’t truly 100% committed.

2/ True product-market fit. Which can be arrived at, or hacked, in many different ways

But roughly, if you aren’t growing at least 10% a month in MRR on the way to $1m ARR, and at least 6% a month thereafter, you don’t quite have product-market fit yet.

3/ Deep, true passion and belief in your market, customers and journey

Total commitment to understanding every nuance of your market and niche, and shipping software to serve it.

4/ The patience to keep at it, for always, forever

Because it takes 7-10 years, minimum, to really get anywhere in SaaS. And sometimes two decades to really build something huge. 

To be a Very Successful SaaS Company. To hit $100m ARR, IPO, etc. You also need:

5/ A great CEO. Not just very good. 

Incredibly, or at least very, smart. Insanely driven. Not just very driven. Really, a little bit insane. Because there’s no magical network effect in SaaS. The CEO has to push the rock up the hill.

6/ The ability to see the future. 

In SaaS, anyone with a brain can see the white space that exists today. What’s hard is to truly see where it will evolve in 2, 3, 7 years — and how to get there. The best SaaS CEOs I know, the ones can see the future. And how to get there.

7/ The ability to get to that future, no matter what. Period. 

To recruit amazing teams. To break things and fix them. To pick themselves off the ground, 5, 10, 50 times. To never, ever quit.

8/ A market or at least, market segment, that if small now will be huge. 

Related to seeing the future. For example, you can’t take Salesforce head-on today, not really. But CRM is a big market. Small markets that stay small-ish are common in SaaS companies that don’t expand, that don’t grow. These ones all stall out at some point.

So maybe, use this as a checklist if you are deciding whether to join a given SaaS start-up or not. If you have options. You’ll know if they have success, or at least, pre-success. You can see the logos, check out the vibe, read up online. But if the company also has some of the second group of attributes … they probably really have something.
Try to join one in the second category if you can.


The biggest difference I've learned between bootstrapped startups and venture-backed ones:

There is no one standing around doing nothing in bootstrapped startups

There are 2-3 days a quarter I feel like quitting

There are 2-3 days a quarter I'm sure it's isn't worth it

You're not alone

It "even" happens to me

I just don't tell anyone ;) 

You gotta push on.  That's always the answer when you have something.

SaaStrEuropa.com 2023 6-7 June in LONDON!

CEO UiPath
CEO Braze
CEO Loom
CEO Rippling
CEO CockroachDB
CMO Zapier
CRO Bill
CTO HashiCorp
GP Accel
GP Point9
GP Atomico
GP Iconiq
GP 20VC 
GP Index

4,000 of The Best in SaaS -- Learning Together

SaaStrEuropa.com 2023

So what makes for a “bad” startup CEO?  Well, here are the 5 types of startup CEOs … where I’ve lost money, or didn’t make nearly as much as we could have:

1/ Not really committed to going long

This doesn’t so much make you a “bad” CEO as one that likely won’t get much past $2m-$10m in ARR. If you aren’t committed for 10+ years, you tend to exit one way or another … earlier.

2/ Too reactive and emotional

Yes, you do need to care to be a great leader, at least generally speaking IMHO. But if you are too reactive to all the downs and bumps, you will overreact to them. Again, you gotta go long.

3/ Dishonest or at least, a B.S. artist

The CEOs I’ve lost money in many cases lied about something, or at least, weren’t honest about something.

4/ Can sell but can’t build great software

This one is a bit of a shame, but it happens. Sometimes, a non-technical CEO is so great at sales and the vision that sheer force of will allows them to sell several million of a product that just isn’t there, or isn’t very good. A great CTO usually can solve this problem just in time to save the customers, but without one, revenue stalls.

5/ Too slow

The best CEOs and founders are just fast. Fast to iterate, fast to learn, fast to fix. Sometimes, in a new or emerging category you can be slow at first. But you usually at least have to speed up after that.

Maybe stay away from these types.

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So many founders want to give a new VP more time … to do their job.

But here’s the thing: if a VP doesn’t do something you expect them to do in the first 90 days — then they never will.  Not really.

Here’s a list of where I see this:

1/ A head of / director / VP of Marketing that doesn’t get you new leads in 90 days, true new MQLs … Never will.

2/ A head of sales that doesn’t recruit at least one strong rep in the first 30-90 days that hits quota or better …  Never will.

3/ A head of product that doesn’t take over the roadmap, and redirect the engineering team to do something better, faster, and bigger … Never will.

4/ A head of engineering that doesn’t increase feature velocity in the first 90 days … Never will.

5/ A head of customer success that doesn’t truly own churn or net revenue retention in the first 90 days … Can’t. They never will.  They’re a best efforts kind of guy.

I can go on.  And really, it starts to happen in the first 30 days.  90 days is generous.

Some will argue that it makes sense to wait sometimes.  But the top VPs of Sales know you have to get it going soon. 

We do what we are good at, most of us.  The best of us also work hard to stretch.  And when we stretch, we bring in the help, the resources that know how to do what we don’t know how to.  We bring in great people in the areas we don’t know.  The best ones.  Because we have to.

What the failures do instead is bring in mediocre resources, because the VP doesn’t know how to do it either.  They bring in someone too junior or too hands off.  Someone with 12 months experience, reporting to someone who didn’t really do it.  Someone that can’t possibly help the VP who hasn’t done it her himself.

No VP can do it all.  No way.  Especially when most of you are hiring Stretch VPs in your first management team.  No VPS can be great at inbound, outbound, field, SMB, Enterprise, Channel Partners, Strategic Accounts, High Velocity Sales.  No way you can be great at it all.

But at least, make a clear list of what you expect each VP to do.  And whatever they make no real progress on in 90 days — they never will.  Really, write it off.  And either down-spec their role and keep them, and make them a success, just in a more bounded role than you’d hoped.

Or move on.

Until you are clearly #1,

Your homepage should plainly list the 3 things you do better than the competition

One subtle but big mistake I see founder CEOs make is acting as the VP of Product for too long.

How long can the CEO also be the VP of Product?  Roughly, for me, for as long as it’s about a 10-hour a week job.  Maybe up to $3m-$5m in ARR or so.  But these days I see way too many SaaS companies at $8m-$10m ARR or beyond without a true VP of Product.

Three mistakes I see so many SaaS founders make:

1/ First, they wait too long to hire a full-time “head of product” even after the product gets complex. 

Once your product has 50–100 workflows, dozens of use cases, 100s or 1000s of customers, etc. … even just 15-20+ really big customers, all using your product differently … it’s just too much to hack and juggle informally. 

My rough rule of thumb is somewhere between $3m and $5m in ARR in SaaS most products just get too complicated to hack product anymore. You’ll ship better-prioritized features, with happier customers, with better trade-offs, with a full-time head of product. 

CEOs that hang on too long here start shipping features and products that are no longer force-ranked the way they should be. And the key is to hire a true head of product. Someone that can own it, and in the past, has owned a product. If you hire someone too junior, you get a project manager but not enough of an owner here.

2/ Second, later, CEOs wait too long to give up on being the product visionary. 

Hopefully, the CEO is always the strategic visionary, forever. But at some point, the product itself gets so deep and rich, and the markets evolve so much, and the customer needs are so varied and nuanced once you dig in deep … that the founders’ original product vision becomes too simplistic, too dated and stale. 

Every 5–6 years or so in most cases, everything in the market has changed, and the product has evolved so far that the Day 0 vision is very dated. 

At this stage, founders need to let go and have the team own the product vision — not them. The founders still are the heart of the corporate strategy. But the team is now spending 1000x more time with customers, with feature enhancements, with nuances on product lines with 1000s of features … you have to let the team define 95% of The Future. 

And your job becomes more to set the direction, but not provide the directions.

3/ Third too many CEOs just hire  too junior of a product person to start.  

This just never works.  You need someone seasoned enough to own the product and the product roadmap.  Someone that has truly put features into production and managed some sort of team.  Not someone just to make charts and hope someone in engineering might listen to them.

So bring in more help, and let being the VP of Product yourself as a founder go a bit earlier than planned. 

It’s your idea, and your vision, but both of those need to evolve in the coming years.  When it’s even close to a full-time job, hire someone great and experienced to do it … full-time.

I now have bandwidth to do 1 more venture investment by June 30, $750k-$4m

Www.SaaStrFund.com for criteria

If that’s you, just please email me as many details as possible

So do sales reps really add value?  Well, at leas they do in the enterprise and with more complex deployments. At least the best  ones do.

That’s what a lot of founders miss if they haven’t worked with great mid-market and enterprise sales execs before.

Let’s break sales down into 2 types: transactional and solution sales.

In transactional sales, which are often low-priced solutions … it can be hard to provide a ton of value:

➡ Absolute cost is fairly low.
➡ Few, if any, concerns on security, workflow and business process change, etc.
➡ Prospect can often try and deploy the solution on their own first.
Questions and issues are important but pretty simple.
➡ Buyer is often the only decision-maker.
Buyer might buy many products this year.
➡ It’s just one tool of many the Buyer uses. Won’t make-or-break their job.

Solutions sales is quite different:

1️⃣ / Absolute cost higher

2️⃣ / Often real work to do a pilot, get product into production. May be significant security, worfklow, business process, and other implications of introducing a new vendor.

3️⃣ / Often hard to really do a bonafide trial on your own. Business process change and data needs too complex. It’s not like trying Canva or the basic version of Slack.

4️⃣ / Multiple stakeholders, each with different needs and goals.
Buyer may need buy-in from others.

5️⃣ / Often the only significant product that buyer will buy that year
Success of product roll-out often tied to buyer’s career success.

6️⃣ / And importantly — buyer pays out of their budget, but rarely out of their own pocket.  These days, often a capped budget, but still a budget.

You can see in a transactional sale, the buyer often just has a few key questions and is ready to move on. Does sales add value? Well, often not so much.

But in a solution sale, a great sales rep is the buyer’s ally — and does a lot of real work for them. The rep helps design the pilot. She makes sure the product is configured properly and deployed properly (often with help from others, but owns getting it done). She does multiple demos to multiple stakeholders, and answers their questions truthfully but also with an eye to supporting the buyer. She marshalls vendor resources to making sure the roll-out goes well.

That’s a lot of help. Especially to a buyer that has a fixed budget, but in the end, isn’t really paying out of their own pocket.

A great solution sales rep makes the prospect’s life a lot easier. Not just before the sale. But after, as well.  The whole process, when truly done right in a solution sales process, makes the buyer … a hero.


Not everyone on the team really needs to be on your mission

But almost all the first 50 employees do

Hire pirates and romantics at least until you are truly ready to scale

Open article: 6 Things Sales Reps Say That Kill Deals by Jason M. Lemkin

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/6-things-sales-reps-say-kill-deals-jason-m-lemkin-1c?trackingId=ZBde0F4A3Ytn64UCa7P51g%3D%3D

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